Good People of St. Mark’s,                                                                                                            

My mother is 88 and has been hospitalized three times in the last year. Her four living children have been navigating her changing health care needs through personal visits, email conversations, phone calls, and zoom conversations. How do we support her? What can she do on her own? Where does she need to live? Can she drive on her own? When is it time to quit driving?  What changes need to be made? And finally, how do we siblings negotiate the differences of opinion that we have concerning the answers to these questions?

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I am the child living closest to Mother, and therefore the one “on point” for assistance in emergencies and in daily life. A sibling emailed me, “What do you want for Mother? How will you make that happen?”

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My response:

I seek the death, resurrection, and life of Christ to be fully realized in all of us.

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 What does this mean?

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I want each one of us:

·         To be fully alive physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually in every                      dimension of our being.

·         To be present to each moment.

·         To be one with God, self, others, all living creatures, and all matter.

·         To love fully and completely, and to be loved fully and completely. (See I                Corinthians 13.)

·         To be filled with gratitude, joy, and peace.

·         To become fully the unique, glorious, powerful person we were created to be.

·         To know and use all our gifts and strengths for that which is good,                      healing, and wholesome.

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 I want each one of us to put to death in our own person all that is not life giving, that is, to die to:

·         All lies, deceptions, and evil.

·         All fear, anxiety, and worry.

·         All fear of death, loneliness, separation, and of insignificance

·         All that blinds us, imprisons us, and destroys us.

·         All hate, violence, and cruelty.

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 I want each one of us to live a resurrected life, so that we are:

·         Fully forgiving and fully forgiven.

·         Fully reconciled, restored, and rejuvenated.

·         Resurrected from all that we have—by God's grace—put to death in this                life.

·         Anticipating the fullness of the resurrected life to come.

·         Filled with the hope that goodness, justice, and truth will ultimately                      triumph.

·         Trusting God's will and ways are at work in all things, but especially in all            that seems to be not of God.

·         Believing that all will be well, and that all will be well, and that all                      manner of things will be well.

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This is what I want for myself, my family, and all of us. My ministry is inviting us all, myself included, to learn to live a real life not a superficial life. It is inviting us to turn away from that which does not bring true life. Most importantly, it is inviting us to live by the power of God to do and to be that which only can be done by God’s presence and power within us.

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Peace,  
Pastor Doug

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